What started out as a routine traffic stop led to a meth bust involving five suspects on Aug. 31.

Around 2:30 p.m., Lt. Stephanie Smith of the Caryville Police Department was traveling on Park Road when she noticed the driver, Tonya Lawson, and front passenger, Betty Cummings, of a gray Toyota Sequoia weren’t wearing seatbelts, her report said. Turning to follow, she turned on her siren and lights.

Officer Thomas Gentry with the Caryville Police Department went to investigate a breaking and entering around 10 p.m. on Sept. 1.

He found Thomas Hewitt Jr. at the scene, Gentry’s report said.

Hewitt explained that the owner’s son had given him permission to plug a cable into the inside of another empty home on the property in order to have electricity, Gentry’s report said. The victim’s grandson told Gentry his grandmother had allowed Hewitt to pay her for the use of electricity from another home she owned.

The LaFollette City Council approved the purchase of a street sweeper and a backhoe for the public works department.

The decision was put off at the last regular meeting. Public works department head Jim Mullens discussed the prices of the different pieces of equipment and the trade in value of the equipment the city is currently using during the workshop last Monday.

The Jellico Housing Authority had purchased the abandoned building and the lot next to it.

“We knew we were going to tear that building down, it was just a matter of when,” JHA Executive Director Crystal Creekmore said. “I know it had a lot of history, but it was a very old building, just in poor condition.”

This building used to be a Ford dealership, but has been abandoned for years.